Guest Voice: Judicious ruling limits side effects of legislative ill

This editorial originally appeared in the Jefferson City News-Tribune on Sept. 4.

Reason prevails.

Missouri’s constitutional right to farm does not extend to growing marijuana, Cole County Circuit Judge Dan Green ruled last week.

The judge’s decision responded to a motion filed April 28 by Public Defender Justin Carver on behalf of a client facing a criminal charge of growing marijuana in her basement.

In this forum on May 1, we referred to Carver’s motion as a “novel” defense strategy. The pleading also had merit, because it set in motion a judicial test of the limits, and potential dangers, of the Missouri Legislature’s increasing tendency to clutter the constitution with unnecessary amendments.

In addition to a right to farm, legislative zeal to amend the state constitution created a gun rights amendment, duplicating a right already established in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, and buttressed a failed effort to grant parents a “fundamental right to raise and educate their children,” despite our historic, cultural deference to parenting and families.

The judiciary has become the common-sense check and balance on the possible legislative mayhem created by lawmakers’ insistence on duplicative, vote-getting “amendment-itis.”

Green filled this role again when he ruled a right to farm does not include home-grown marijuana cultivation.

In addition to the timing factor — the defendant was charged before the right became effective — Green determined the “argument that growing marijuana in a basement constitutes a ‘farming or ranching practice’ goes way beyond the plain meaning of” the term. “Simply put,” he added, “marijuana is not considered a part of Missouri’s agriculture.”

In the May 1 editorial, we concluded: “Whenever a constitutional amendment is proposed, we encourage Missourians to consider whether it is necessary and, more importantly, to envision the worst-case scenario if it passes.”

Unless and until public opinion subdues legislative amendment-itis, we will need to rely on the judiciary for damage control.